15 October 2024 Stars behaving absurdly For centuries, the only way in which to illuminate the mysteries of black holes was through the power of mathematics. Steve Nadis and Shing-Tung Yau, Aeon
20 September 2024 The forging of countries Two distinct and conflicting forms of nationalism – civic and ethnic – helped create the nation-states of Europe. Luka Ivan Jukić, Aeon
1 August 2024 Bonapartism, Gaullism, Macronism The best explanation for Macron’s decision to dissolve the National Assembly is that he hoped to reactivate the left’s endorsement of him as a lesser evil. David Todd, London Review of Books
17 June 2024 What is intelligent life? Our human minds hold us back from truly understanding the many brilliant ways that other creatures solve their problems. Abigail Desmond & Michael Haslam, Aeon
June 20, 2024 Carnival of Self-Harm It would be a mistake to think that what has happened to Britain since 2010 is an accident, an unforeseen side-effect. Tom Crewe, London Review of Books
20 April 2024 Kant and the case for peace Three centuries after his birth, the Prussian philosopher’s arguments for a rational, clear-eyed pacifism are more relevant than ever. Lea Ypi, Financial Times
March 4, 2024 Large language models can do jaw-dropping things. But nobody knows exactly why And that’s a problem. Figuring it out is one of the biggest scientific puzzles of our time and a crucial step towards controlling more powerful future models. Will Douglas Heaven, MIT Technology Review
13-02-2024 Frontier AI ethics Generative agents will change our society in weird, wonderful and worrying ways. Can philosophy help us get a grip on them? Seth Lazar, Aeon
05-01-2024 How a Stabbing Changed France The political establishment at first took no notice of the death of Thomas Perotto. Christopher Caldwell, Compact Magazine
09-11-2023 How America became the world’s Leviathan The US is discovering its unique power in international politics: its unparalleled authority over key nodes of the world economy through which global communications, finance and technology move. Jake Dow & Stehen Paduano, Engelsberg Ideas
09-10-2023 Finance as alchemy Finance fraud is not a deviation from an essentially rational system but a window onto the reality-distortion of markets. Aris Komporozos-Athanasiou, Aeon
08-09-2023 Spain’s Lessons for American Decline Imperial Spain’s maximum territorial reach would only be surpassed by the British Empire in the 19th century, and in the 20th by the informal American imperium, with its 750 overseas bases and network of global alliances. R. Taggart Murphy, Compact Magazine
05-09-2023 The cloud sovereignty nexus: How the European Union seeks to reverse strategic dependencies in its digital ecosystem Filippo Gualtiero Blancato, Policy and Internet
24-08-2023 A New Cosmist Moment On the right to exist (immortality, resurrection, rejuvenation) and the freedom to move in cosmic space. Alexander Gelland , Palladium
22-07-2023 Young, pretty, unemployed China And what if the social pact between millions of “unproductive” youth and the Party is broken? Vittoria Mazzieri, Siamomine
21-02-2023 War and Theft: The Takeover of Ukraine’s Agricultural Land The financial interests and the dynamics at play leading to further concentration of land and finance. The Oakland Institute
May/June 2022 Capital and cybernetics The deep historical processes and the radical discontinuities of our current conjuncture. Timothy Erik Ström, New left Review
12-07-2021 Treason of the Intellectuals The French thinker Julien Benda made a high-minded case for the moral transcendence of the truth. The flaws in his argument show why speaking truth to power is a fraught endeavor. Mark Lilla, Tablet
Sping 2020 The Cleopatra’s Nose of 1914 The story of the Caillaux affair—a murdered newspaper editor, a web of adultery, and the road to World War I. Jack Beatty, Lapham’s Quarterly
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